Rainy Monday

Keeping his hands busy...

*Not sure who put the scarf on his head. :o)

Mommy. Daddy and Macheus...

With all of our other babies the hospital "Pink Ladies" took the newborn pictures.  Because I had done it with the first baby, I always felt like I needed to do it with all of them.  I would always buy the minimum just to have that "newborn" picture, even though they were never really that good! :o) The hospital now has a professional photographer that takes your baby's picture for free and then you can order from your computer at home if you want any.  With all of the confusion with him being in the NNICU I was going to just forget it.  I decided to ask about it the morning we were being discharged.  The photographer came and did a bunch of Macheus.  She said she wanted to take one with Marc and I.  I wasn't even thinking about us being in them so our clothes and my hair weren't "prepared".  I also was SO sleep deprived that I hated to do it.  I am so glad that I let her talk me into it now.  Marc said that he looks like a dork. :o)  I look like I have spent four sleepless nights in the hospital, but I am still thrilled to have this picture.  Macheus is so tiny and it goes by so fast!

I will share some of the pictures of Macheus next time.  They were all so sweet! 

Everyone loves Macheus...

If you are tired of seeing pictures of my baby, you might want to skip this post! :o)  I can't get enough of him!

McKenzie and Macheus

 Myles loves "Baby Cheus"!

 It is so sweet that Matthew asks if he can hold him in the evenings. :o)

 This was a sad day.  My sister brought my dad down to see Macheus for the first time.  It just didn't feel right without my mom there!

 Macheus with his cousin Annie. :o)

Macheus and his oldest cousin Abigail.

 

 Aunt Kellie

Some friends of ours came down to meet Macheus.  Here he is with "Uncle Bo".

With "Aunt Donna"

 Macheus and Nikki.

 Malachi

 Madeline

 He always has someone that is willing to hold him!

Naming baby...

We always have the hardest time settling on a name for our new babies. It doesn't help that we only use "M" names! The last two weren't named until after they were born.  A week before Macheus was born we had a list of ten names.  Marc and I heard the name Macheus on the Bible movie "The Greatest Story Ever Told" when they said,  "The Prophet Macheus told us Bethlehem."  We loved that name but couldn't find a spelling for it.  I wasn't about to make up the spelling! :o)  One night we sat in the bed and we both eliminated several names.  That left us with about three names.  Marc finally found a Bible website with it and the meaning is "Who is like our Lord".  I had in my mind what the baby would look like if we used different names.  I pictured "Macheus" with lots of dark hair. :o)  A few hours after he was born we finally said his name was Macheus Trust. (Macheus pronounced Muh-Kay-Us)

I picked "Trust" as the middle name early in my pregnancy.  After having two miscarriages and then starting this pregnancy with some problems, I was very worried  that this baby might not make it either.  My mom had just died and someone gave me a devotional book.  It seemed like every time I read something it would either be talking about trust or have a verse with trust in it.  I told Marc if the baby was a boy, I wanted his middle name to be "Trust".  He already has lots of nick names.  Myles has shortened it to "Cheus".  The girls call him "kay- kay"  Grandpa and Matthew both call him "Little Mac".

So, there you have it............ our little Macheus Trust! :o)

Welcoming Macheus Home

It was a happy day when we finally got to bring Macheus home.  So thankful for a healthy baby and ready to be under one roof again!

Remember the pitiful bow that I got at Kroger?  Well, that wasn't going to do for McKenzie.  They went to town before we got home and she got balloons to put on the mailbox.  When I saw it I wanted to cry.  Grandma wasn't here to do what she has always done, but how sweet that God knew Macheus would have all of these brothers and sisters to love on him.

 Matthew bought flowers for me.  So sweet....

 Madeline had planned this weeks ahead of time. :o) 

 They couldn't wait to get their eyes on him.

 So much excitement!

 Because of the hospital flu policy,  the younger children had not gotten to see him.  Mariah was so excited to finally meet him!

 I sure missed this little fellow!

 Myles cracks me up.  He loves the baby and is our biggest baby hog!

 Proud big brother! 

 He looks just a little bit excited. :o)

 Sweet baby...

 Sister love...

We are settling into a new routine with baby.  It is funny how everything changes, but then you can't imagine life without them. 

Birth Story Part 2

Macheus looked perfect when he was born.  He had a head full of dark hair, his coloring was great and he showed us that he had a good set of lungs!  I got to hold him immediately and he nursed great.  They weighed, measured him and did his footprints.  He weighed 8 lb 5 oz. and was 20 1/2 inches long.  Pretty average size for my babies.

I had the sweetest nurse too.  She pretty much just stood back and let us do our thing!

 Daddy holding him for the first time.

 McKenzie

Madeline

It was close to midnight when we finally got moved to our regular postpartum room.  We got a new nurse once we moved and she brought the stuff in for him to have his bath.  We were very blessed with great nurses!

He wasn't crazy about his bath and even now at home he doesn't love them! :o)

Sweet little guy....

 McKenzie made this sign for our door.

 Since six of our seven babies were born at the same hospital, we always take a picture of the room number.  One of these days I am going to compare all of their albums and see if we were ever in the same room!

When the nurse was moving us form the delivery room to the postpartum room I noticed that the baby was making a groaning/singing sound.  My heart sunk because I knew that wasn't a good sound.  I kept rubbing his back trying to get him to stop.  The nurse that bathed him clued into it when she was checking him out after his bath.  I could tell she was a little uncomfortable.  She also thought she heard a slight heart murmur.  She got a machine to check his oxygen saturation.  He would go up to 95% but it would dip down to 88%.  She took him to the nursery and called the pediatrician.  By this time Marc and McKenzie had headed home thinking that things were ok.  When the nurse told me that the doctor wanted the baby to go to the NNICU to be checked out I called Marc to let him know.  I was scared, yet we had been through this before.  The neonatologist that checked him out immediately sent him to a step down nursery, Level 2.  He was on "room air" oxygen to help give him a boost.  By early Sunday morning he wasn't doing well.  The nurse said his lips looked blueish and she moved him back to NNICU.  I had only been asleep one hour when a nurse called and woke me up to tell me that they had moved him back to the NNICU.  I raced down to the NNICU which was a good trek (at least when you have just given birth!) down several halls.  When I got down there he was hooked up to oxygen, IV and a machine called C-PAP that kept his lungs filled with air.  I have had two other babies that had short stays in the NNICU, so it wasn't a complete shock to me, but definitely not somewhere that you want to see your brand new baby!

 

 

 

 

Marc came back to the hospital early Sunday morning.  We have a friend/neighbor that is a nurse at the hospital and was working that day.  She took Madeline home for us that afternoon and Marc stayed that night with me.  Monday morning when Marc and I went down to the NNICU to see the baby they were doing an echo cardiogram on him.  That really freaked me out!  It wasn't long that the pediatric cardiologist came over to tell us that they had ordered that just to be sure there wasn't anything going on with his heart that contributed to his breathing problems.  To make a really long story short, in the end.... everything was perfect with him.  The x-ray just showed that his lungs had "junk" in them left over from birth that made his transition from womb to breathing harder for him.  The heart murmur was completely gone before he was a week old.  We have SO much to be thankful for!

Monday evening Marc went home and McKenzie came to stay with me.  They discharged me and moved me into a "nesting" room.  I think it was Monday evening when they started trying to feed him.  I pumped and they wanted me to feed it to him with a bottle.  It was so frustrating because my "mommy instincts" were to nurse him!  After about 12 hours of that I realized that their reasoning was that they wanted to get as much milk in him as possible.  I spoke up and told them I could get more in him if they would let me nurse him.  By the time he took 30 CC from a bottle he wasn't going to put the effort into nursing.  A different neonatologist came on early Tuesday morning and told me that I could begin nursing him.  They had weaned him off of the oxygen and C-PAP machine.  They were slowly weaning him off the IV and would check his blood sugar each feeding that I nursed him.  By Tuesday evening everything was going well and they moved me to a "nesting" room that was closer to the NNICU.  I was SO excited to get my baby back!!!

Back with mommy and nothing hooked to him!

He did great that night with me.  Marc came back Tuesday night and stayed with us since we knew we probably would be discharged on Wednesday.  

A funny story that happened the night we were in the nesting room.  The hospital has alarm tags on the babies' ankles.  Since Macheus was moved into the room with us, he had to have a tag put back on.  There was a blue line in our room that we could not cross or it would set the alarm off.  The nurse came into our room in the middle of the night to take him back to the NNICU for an assessment.  She called to have his tag deactivated to transport him.  Something happened and the entire hospital alarm system went off.  I got up and peeked out the door.  Literally less than a minute later there were armed police everywhere and nurses were hollering from the NNICU door,  "We have the baby!!"  It was amazing how fast they acted.  

The next day the neonatologist checked him out and gave us the clear to take our baby home!!!  I have never been so excited to get out of the hospital as I was that day!  Grateful for a healthy baby, exhausted and SO ready to see my other children! 

 

  I started writing this post early this morning and it is now time to put little boys to bed! 

Until next time.........

 

The Birth Story of Macheus Pt. 1

Ok, I kept thinking I would sit down and do a post about his birth.  I haven't had time!  You forget how busy a newborn keeps you! :o)  Well, the out of sorts three year old, laundry and school that has to be started back help with the busyness too!
I sat down over the weekend and made myself write in his journal all about the labor up until when we came home.  I was so glad to get that done!  I decided if I was ever going to blog about it, I would do it in parts.  So, until someone needs me............. here goes part 1!

My last post when I wrote about my last visit with my midwife on Friday the 1st, there wasn't a whole lot of change.  She offered to strip my membranes, but I told her I would rather wait and see what the weekend brought and that I would go back on Monday.  That was the day that Marc took me shopping. :o)  Later that night we were all at home watching Mary Poppins.  It was about 9:00 P.M. that I had my first contraction where I thought,  "That was different AND it hurt."  They came about every fifteen minutes for several hours.  We went ahead and went to bed because I like to labor as long as I can at home.  I actually slept some even though some of the contractions woke me up.  The next morning I had "signs" that the contractions were doing their job.  Matthew had to work all day and McKenzie was supposed to babysit.  I told them both to go ahead and go and I would call if anything changed.  I laid down that morning and the contractions really slowed down.  My midwife was not on call that weekend, but she said to call her cell phone and she would come to the delivery anyway.  (She is incredible!)  At lunch time she called me and when I told her nothing was progressing she told me to go for a walk.  Marc and I went out and walked about four miles.  The contractions picked up really hard and by 5:00 I was calling McKenzie to hurry up and get home.  We got everyone situated at the house and Marc, McKenzie, Madeline and I headed to the hospital.  My midwife called to check on me as we were driving and asked if I minded if Ashley came and did the delivery with her.  Ashley was my labor & delivery nurse with Myles and now she is training to be a midwife.  We ran into each other at one of my prenatal appointments this pregnancy and we both recognized each other.

When I got to the hospital I was 6 1/2 cm and 90% effaced.  I was hurting really bad by this point!  They got me into the labor room and Jeri (my midwife) and Ashely got there a few minutes later.  Jeri told me that if they broke my water we would have a baby soon.  I was so scared about the pain but I went ahead and let them do that.  The contractions got very intense with not much of a break in between them.  At one point I asked Jeri if it was too late for an epidural. :o)  She said yes and I told them all to pray.  McKenzie later told me that my midwife laid her hand on my arm and started praying.  It is so neat to have a Christian for a midwife.  What seemed like an eternity was really only a couple of hours and at 9:14 P.M., we had a beautiful baby boy!

 

Daddy cutting the cord.

It was very sweet having my oldest two girls with me.

 

Looking back, it was neat how God's hand was on the whole thing.  My midwife wasn't on call, yet she was there.  Ashley, who is also a Christian, came and delivered when she really wasn't "officially" supposed to be there..  It was like we were at the hospital but not a part of it at all!

This was Madeline's first birth.  I worried that she would get freaked out, but she did great.  She was our video girl.

Midwife- Jeri

Ashley

 

Ok, I am still a little sleep deprived.  Hope this post makes sense.  I will end it here for now.